


Liberosis

by ObscureReference



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Crying, Emotions, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Hair Braiding, Happy Ending, Hearts, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Magic, Pre-Relationship, Rings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 06:23:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17740541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObscureReference/pseuds/ObscureReference
Summary: Tharja grabbed something off a table. She brought back a small vial full of red liquid and offered it to Severa.“Drink this,” she said.Severa took the vial warily. She sniffed it, but strangely, it was odorless. The liquid inside looked thick.“What is it?” Severa asked. “What’s it for?”“It will render your heart from your chest,” Tharja said.





	Liberosis

**Author's Note:**

> I recently realized that even though I've written Camilla/Selena(/Beruka) before, I've never given any of them their own romance fic before! Which had to be remedied immediately!
> 
> This fic takes pre-Awakening and then moves on to anywhere you want in the Fates timeline!
> 
> This was inspired by another fic I wrote like three years ago now for another fandom. But that fic was a little more literal and this one came out a bit different. I like them both. I hope you like this too!
> 
> This fic has canonical references to Tharja's child abuse (especially post-husband's death. Namely giving Noire hexed colds). It's only briefly mentioned though. (You can imagine Tharja's husband to be whoever you want, but I think I implied who I chose pretty strongly. Not out of preference so much as remembering who I had on my first playthrough of FE13 and being unable to avoid the hints of who it is here when I wrote the scenes that needed another adult. It doesn't matter to me if you imagine someone else though.)

When they gave Severa her mother’s ring, she’d screamed _._

It wasn’t that her mother’s death didn’t seem possible. It was that after years of neighbors dropping like flies and whispered conversations about having to move again before the war ended up on their doorstep that the adults didn’t think she could hear, the possibility had always seemed far too real. So much so that Severa had fought her mother, tooth and nail, when it had come time for Cordelia to return to the front lines again.

Severa had hurled nasty words at her mother.

 _“Do you love Chrom_ that _much?”_ she’d spat, heart pounding harder than any pegasus’s hooves. _“You love him more than your own daughter?”_

Her mother had looked at her with heavy eyes. _“I’m fighting to protect the most important person in the world to me, you know.”_

Severa did know. Cordelia’s tone had been sad, like she thought Severa too thickheaded to understand. But Severa had understood all too well.

After that argument, Severa had marched out of the house and down to the local creek. She’d kicked rocks and splashed her own reflection in the water away until the anger bled out of her like a blister. The sun was low when she went back to her house.

When she returned, her mother was gone, and the neighbor woman with two little toddlers of her own was sitting on the porch, waiting to tell Severa that she’d stay at her house while her mother was gone, if that was all right. Not that Severa really had a choice about it. She’d said as much.

Severa’s father had died serving Chrom too. It had never been much of a stretch to assume her mother could go the same way. The possibility had always seemed real, had frustrated Severa to tears on more than one occasion, and yet somehow it still blindsided Severa when it happened.

Cordelia’s ring was hard and cold. It dug into Severa’s clenched palm painfully.

When they told her that her mother was dead, Severa had clenched the ring in her fist with all her might and _howled._

She screamed and screamed, more wild beast than girl. She’d clutched fistfuls of her hair and yanked like the sting of it offered any comfort other than pain. Head thrown back, ring nestled in her palm like the dumb rock it was, Severa screamed loud enough to wake the dead.

If only.

Nobody stopped her.

They had certainly _tried_. That same neighbor woman who had watched Severa in the two weeks her mother had been gone tried to tug Severa’s fists out of her hair, murmuring gentle words of comfort as she reached for Severa.

Severa pushed her away. The woman’s toddlers, scared by the sound and their mother’s stumbling, began to cry.

That neighbor, whose name Severa had forgotten but whose face she never had, looked at her sadly. A ghost of the way Severa’s own mother had looked at her not two weeks before. The sight of it was terrible.

That just set Severa off even more. She couldn’t stop.

Others came and went over the next hour. Men, women, strangers, other children her age—they all begged her to stop, _please_. She was scaring them. She was making a scene.

But Severa couldn’t stop. Couldn’t have even if she wanted to. She didn’t stop until her throat was raw, until her face turned crimson, until her chest burned like she might drop dead right there and join her mother in the ground.

After the first hour, everyone gave up. They let her wander out to that same creek by herself. “Until she tires herself out,” they’d said.

Severa kept screaming until she broke her limit and went beyond. She screamed until she had no voice left to scream with. Until her screams turned to sobs, until she had no more tears left to cry. Until she felt wrung out and used and so very alone in the world.

Through it all, she’d kept her mother’s ring clenched in her fist.

Another neighbor came to collect her that evening. A much more cautious man than the woman with the toddlers. He helped Severa stand without speaking, obviously too worried that she’d start screaming again to start conversation. He took her home to his wife, and there Severa slept until morning.

They offered her dinner. She didn’t take it.

They looked at her with those same sad eyes.

The next day, Noire’s mother came to collect her. Severa didn’t know how she’d gotten there so fast, who had told her. She didn’t care.

Noire wasn’t with her.

Tharja and Cordelia hadn’t ever really been fast friends, and it showed.

“Come along, girl,” Tharja said, side-eyeing the polite couple who had taken Severa in for the night. They were obviously put off by Tharja’s everything. “My husband and child have taken pity on you. So come with me, unless you'd prefer to stay here."

Severa scowled at the kitchen table. But anywhere was better than an unfamiliar house and empty words from polite strangers who didn’t really know her. They only pitied her.

Tharja clearly didn’t pity anybody, and that, at the very least, was different. Maybe, someday, it would be manageable. Severa didn’t know how she’d ever move on from the gaping hole inside her though.

“Whatever,” she muttered hoarsely. She gripped her little satchel loosely. Some neighbor had packed it for her the night before, but Severa hadn’t looked inside. She assumed it had some clothes.

Tharja turned away from the doorway without waiting for a better reply. She didn’t seem to notice or care if Severa followed or not.

Reluctantly, Severa did.

When she got to Noire’s house, Tharja disappeared into the cellar. Severa stood in the yard, unsure as to whether or not she still had to follow.

Then, before she could decide, the front door opened. Noire’s father stepped out while Noire herself—scrawny, pale, watching Severa nervously with too shiny eyes—cowered behind the doorframe.

Noire’s father laid a hand on Severa’s shoulders.

“I’m real sorry ‘bout what happened, Severa,” he said with a familiar twang. One of the only familiar things Severa had known in days. “And I know Tharja and I can’t make up for your Ma or nothin’. But I hope you can find some comfort while you’re here.”

He smiled at her. Severa swallowed the urge to say something nasty just because she could and looked down.

He guided her into the house. Noire trailed after them like some kind of baby dear turned human. Severa got along better with Noire than most other kids she’d ever met, but right then she didn’t want company.

Noire’s father must have known that too, because he showed Severa to her room—shared with Noire, of course, but Severa couldn’t have cared less—and let her be. Severa looked around, not pretending not to hear him tell Noire to leave Severa alone for a little while. They both left, and then Severa was alone. Again.

She didn’t leave Noire’s room—her room—that day. She sat on the bed as the sun dipped lower and lower in the sky, turning her mother’s ring over in her fingers. Her little satchel remained unpacked where she dropped it.

At some point in the evening, Noire’s father brought her a plate with food. Severa picked at it. He said some things she didn’t pay attention to and then eventually left.

Noire didn’t come to bed until late. Severa feigned sleep. Eventually, Noire went to bed too.

Over the next few days, Noire tried to start up conversations. She told Severa she was sorry about her mother. Severa threw pillows at her until Noire left her alone. Then Noire tried to offer a shoulder for Severa to cry on if need be. That got her a sour look in return. Noire changed tactics after that and didn’t talk about Severa’s parents at all. Instead, she talked about the animals her dad hunted or the hexes her mother was trying to research. About the cold her mother had given her for a full week before Severa had arrived. It was better than talking about her parents, but still, Severa brushed her off.

Nobody _got_ it. Nobody understood what it was like. Severa didn’t want to talk about it.

She wanted her mom.

Every now and again, Noire’s dad came in to check up on Severa. Severa usually responded with shrugs or grunts until he left.

Logically, she knew he meant well. Noire too. But she had a wound in her chest instead of a heart, and she didn’t have the capacity to really care about anything else at the moment. Or maybe ever again.

She didn’t talk much in those days.

On the fourth day, after the millionth sad look from Noire’s father and Noire herself got to be too much, she stomped out of the house and plopped down on the porch.

She wasn’t going to run away, even though part of her wanted to. There wasn’t anywhere else to go. But the angry ball inside Severa’s chest that could still feel wanted _out_ , so out she went _._

Outside, Tharja was waiting for her.

She gave Severa a rather unimpressed look.

“Girl,” she said. And then, at the look Severa shot her, she amended, “Severa.”

Severa grunted.

Tharja stared.

“What?” Severa snapped. She knew she should have been more grateful to Tharja for coming to get her at all. They didn’t _have_ to take her in.

But she also wasn’t sure how she felt about Tharja, who hexed her own family just as easily as she hexed a foe. Tharja, who was creepy and grim and had once given Severa and Noire twin talismans that would break the fingers of anyone who tried to touch them when she wasn't there to watch them. Tharja, who had also fought for Chrom.

Just like—

Anyway, it was a lot of conflicting traits to have in a person, and Severa had only experienced most of them second hand.

“You’re miserable,” Tharja said frankly.

Severa bristled. It was the bluntest anyone had been to her since—

“Excuse me?”

“You’re miserable,” Tharja repeated. “You look miserable, in more ways than one. And you are making my husband and child miserable. Which is normally the default, but only when _I_ decide that.”

Severa’s jaw dropped.

“You want me to be _sorry_ that I’m not happier my mother is _dead_?” Her voice hitched on the last word. Severa’s voice was a lot closer to a shout than any normal volume, and she didn’t care. “ _Sorry_ that I’m not walking around with a painted on smile like some dumb clown?”

It was the most she had said in days. Anger she thought that she had exhausted came burbling up inside her.

Shuffling came from inside the house—obviously others had heard her—but Tharja and Severa both ignored it.

Tharja sniffed. She stood up and began briskly walking around the side of the house.

“Hurry up,” she said when Severa didn’t move. Tharja kept walking.

Severa stared. Then, for reasons she didn’t quite understand, she scrambled after Tharja.

They made it to the cellar just as the front door opened. Tharja descended down the wooden stairs, and Severa went down after her.

The cellar doors swung shut behind her as purple candles lining the dirt walls flickered to life. Severa jumped, but Tharja remained unaffected. So Severa sucked in a quick breath for composure and kept following her down. A bit of wetness stung at Severa’s eyes, and she forcefully blinked her angry tears away.

At the bottom of the stairs, Tharja moved swiftly past a chalk circle on the dirt floor. The circle was filled with all kinds of symbols and words Severa had no idea how to read. She hesitated at the bottom of the stairs.

Tharja grabbed something off a table. She brought back a small vial full of red liquid and offered it to Severa.

“Drink this,” she said.

Severa took the vial warily. She sniffed it, but strangely, it was odorless. The liquid inside looked thick.

“What is it?” Severa asked. “What’s it for?”

“It will render your heart from your chest,” Tharja said.

Severa didn’t believe that for a second, but she also didn’t really care about whatever weird thing Noire’s mother had up her sleeve. Nothing really mattered anymore anyway. So she downed the vile.

The moment the last of it was swallowed, she made a face. “Ew, what—”

“Give me your ring,” Tharja said, holding out her palm.

Severa faltered.

Tharja rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to steal it. I have my own. Just give it to me for a moment.”

“No,” Severa said reflexively. Her fingers curled around the ring in her pocket.

But Tharja stood there, waiting, and so after a moment Severa pulled her mother’s ring from her pocket and reluctantly dropped it in Tharja’s open palm.

Tharja turned it over in her hands, examining the metal and muttering under her breath. Severa strained to hear the words, ready to defend her mother’s ring at the slightest provocation. She didn’t get the chance.

The candles lining the walls flickered ominously, briefly plunging the room into darkness. A bright light flashed behind Severa’s eyes. She had to blink the stars in her vision away. Blood rushed to her head, and Severa stumbled at the sudden rush of lightheadedness for a moment before her legs gave out. Her butt hit the stairs.

Now sitting on one of the lower steps, she looked up at Tharja.

Looking self-satisfied, Tharja handed the ring back. Severa took it greedily.

Tharja nodded. “Good. You may go now.”

Severa blinked again, but this time no light flash. She was still in a creepy basement with Noire’s weird mom.

“Wait,” she said, feeling— _different_ than before, though she couldn’t say exactly how. “What did you do?”

Tharja gave her the same look all adults gave her when they thought Severa was stupid.

“I told you already,” she said. “I took your heart from your chest.”

Severa’s hands flew up to her chest, but there was no hole there. She only felt the cloth from her shirt, still whole and untouched. No bone, only skin.

Tharja rolled her eyes. “Not literally. Symbolically. Emotionally. It’s in the ring now.”

Those words didn’t make sense to Severa in that order.

“Wha—”

She looked at her mother’s ring, inspecting it closely for any sign of strangeness. It didn’t look any different than it had before.

It was still cold. Still silver. Still—

Severa squinted. Did the jewel in the middle look a little more red than it had before? Or was that just her imagination? She couldn’t tell.

“Well?” Tharja prompted. “Do you still feel sorry for yourself?”

It was so condescending that Severa had to sneer. “I never—”

She froze. Because Tharja was right.

Before, it had felt like there was a huge hold in her chest. A massive wound that was still bleeding and raw. And emptiness that couldn’t be filled.

Now, Severa still felt empty. But it was a different kind of emptiness. The pain was still present, but it was less sharp. More manageable. It didn’t bleed so much into Severa's whole being. Her thoughts weren’t constantly slipping back to mother, to her own selfish guilt.

Tharja had taken Severa’s sadness and hurt and had balled it up somehow.

No, she had told Severa how it worked. She’d taken Severa's pain had had put it in the ring. Her mother’s ring.

Severa looked at the ring. It did not acknowledge her.

Slowly, cautiously, she slipped it back into her pocket.

She felt… fine. More or less.

Tharja hadn’t taken everything. A distant part of Severa was still sad and angry and wanted to be alone. But that part of her wasn’t so sharp anymore. She thought about where she was and found she didn't  _hate_ being in Noire's house instead of her own anymore. Something deep in her chest no longer cried for her to turn back the clock and erase that argument with her mom, to say something else before Cordelia left, to stop her from leaving at all. Those feelings were still there, yes, but most of the sting had been sucked out of the cut.

“You should deal with all that at some point,” Tharja said when Severa, still reeling from this new revelation, failed to speak. “Come back to me when you want your heart shoved back in your chest. Or don’t. It makes no difference to me.”

Severa sat there, dumbstruck, still parsing through what this all meant.

Tharja stepped towards one of the tables, which were covered in various supplies that Severa didn’t want to look at too closely. She paused when she saw Severa wasn’t moving.

“I have other things to do today,” Tharja said.

So Severa left.

* * *

 

In the end, she never got the chance to ask Tharja all the details about what keeping her “symbolic, emotional” heart in a ring meant because Noire’s father went and got himself killed on the front lines shortly thereafter.

Tharja didn’t do much of anything after that. That is, she did a lot of _something_ , Severa thought, down in the basement where no one was allowed to go. She rarely came up, and even then, she didn’t have much to say. Usually she didn’t notice Severa and Noire unless it was to cast some kind of spell that made them miserable until it wore off again.

Severa and Noire shared a lot of things in the few days Severa stayed after that. Food. A few secrets. Mostly colds.

Between bouts of tears, Noire snuck into the cellar to watch her mother do unspeakable things. Severa stayed out of the house as much as she could.

At night, she walked Noire to the bathroom and tried not to think about anything much at all.

Then she was sent to live with another family that didn’t last. Noire stayed with Tharja until she didn’t any longer. The war grew closer to their front doors. The number of lost neighbors piled up. Severa grew up, started carrying a sword, and always kept her mother’s ring with her.

And the rest, as they say, was history.

* * *

It had taken her a long time to realize what Tharja had done for her.

Severa had taken it for a favor at the time. Maybe it would have been if Noire’s father had lived longer or if Tharja hadn’t gone off the deep end soon after. If Severa had gotten the chance to thiank about what it meant, had gotten the option of saying _“Put it back.”_

It was what it was. Just like everything else in Selena’s—then Severa’s—life, she’d been left on her own. She’d figured it out all the same.

As soon as Severa’s heart had been taken from her chest, the pain of her mother’s passing had lessened. Her grief and angered had stayed, yes, but they weren’t as all-encompassing. Her awful feelings didn’t sit like poison on the back of her tongue. She ate more. She ran off less. She was sure she wasn’t any less of a brat, but two out of three wasn’t bad. She became a manageable brat, at least.

It took her a few days to realize that for every inch her anger and sadness sank below the surface of her consciousness, her positive feelings sank a mile.

Joy, gratitude, hope, love—those feelings weren’t _numbed_ , per say. But they didn’t fill her up like they used to.

When Noire smiled around a spoonful of Severa’s then barely passable cooking, Severa wasn’t awash with pride like she once had been. When she saw a passing comedy show in town, she didn’t laugh as hard as everyone else around her. When she walked Noire to the bathroom at night, she didn’t feel the warmth of Noire’s hand in her own. She just felt how tight Noire squeezed.

Severa had become an empty, person-shaped jar. Hopelessness and anger had once filled her up to the brim.

Then Tharja had done her magic, and those feelings had only filled her up halfway. She'd thought it a miracle.

What she hadn't realized was that the trade off for dark magic was that for however repressed those bad things became, the good things had been shoved even farther out of reach.

It wasn’t that Severa wasn’t happy at _all_. She could still smile. Sometimes she did laugh at a joke. It still felt good to beat someone at chess or in a practice bout or with some bet she’d made. Being praised still gave her a rush. It just wasn’t the same as before, and her negative feelings felt so much stronger in contrast, even if they weren't necessarily _strong_ in general.

And during the war, when there had been an abundance of death and every awful thing that could possibly exist under the clouded sun—

Well, she’d understood why people had taken to avoiding her back then.

She was older now. She’d learned how to process her mother’s death, in its own muted way. The magic hadn’t taken the pain away entirely. She been forced to learn how to cope all the same.

Maybe, if the full force of her grief came back one day, she’d have to learn how to cope again. That was a strange thought. It was the kind of thought that made Severa remember a scene she’d stumbled upon once, before jumping back in time.

Brady, ever the crybaby, had been sobbing his eyes out over something. Maybe another village burned down. Maybe a wilted flower. Maybe both. Noire had been there too, rubbing his back as Brady’s shoulders shook.

“ _Damn_ it,” Brady grumbled, scrubbing at his face with the back of his arm. “I’m so tired of this!”

“Er, it’s alright,” Noire said. She looked unsure of herself. “It’s okay to cry, Brady.”

“I can’t help it! Don't look!"

“It’s okay,” Noire repeated as Brady sniffed loudly. “You have to be honest about how you feel, otherwise you’ll never move on.”

Severa had averted her eyes and ducked out of sight. Brady cried at the drop of a hat, but she didn’t want to be involved anyway. Noire’s words had always stuck with her though.

Maybe if Tharja had left her to her own devices for a while longer, Severa would have figured out a way to manage her pain without a magical intervention.

It probably would have taken weeks or even months, sure. But most people got through it all the time, she thought. She could live through the pain too, every inch of it. And then she could move on without the help of magic.   

But it was too late for what-if’s.

Severa was… better, now. Not entirely, of course. But killing Grima had filled Severa with a rush of emotions she hadn’t realized she’d been missing out on for so long. She was more mindful about her attitude now. About keeping the bad things in check.

It was different with Camilla too.

These days, Severa was Selena. Nohr wasn’t Ylisse, but it was something. A place she lived for now, at the very least.

And Camilla was something else altogether.

 

 

 

Camilla made things sharp again.

She made the _good_ things sharp again. She filled Selena up.

“Be a dear and grab that brush for me, would you?” Camilla asked, eyes flicking to Selena in the mirror of her vanity table. She combed her fingers through the long hair Selena admired so much.

Selena nodded, already reaching for the brush that sat on the dresser across the room. She came up behind Camilla and held it out.

“Here you are, Lady Camilla,” she said. She liked moments like this.

Camilla hummed. The fingers in her hair slowed. Though she didn’t turn her body toward Selena, she was still watching Selena in the mirror.

Selena’s real heart—the heart in her chest—didn’t skip a single beat. But she felt a pulse of warmth spread though the ring on her finger. She was very careful not to drop the brush.

It wasn’t the first time Camilla had made her feel this way. It was still just as shocking as the first time though.

Selena wasn’t sure how it happened. It wasn’t any one thing Camilla did, any specific word she said. It was just _Camilla_. She brought Selena’s world to life again.

“What do you think about brushing my hair instead?” Camilla suggested.

Selena lowered the brush in surprise. “Really?”

“Really,” Camilla said. “I’ve got nowhere to be tonight. You can even use me as a model if you’d like. That sounds like fun, doesn’t it? What do you say?”

“It does,” Selena agreed, settling herself behind Camilla. They didn’t have an extra chair, but that was alright. Selena could stand. She looked down at Camilla from behind, considering what hairstyle would best suit her. “This is a little sudden though. I hope you like what I can do.”

“I trust you,” Camilla said blithely, smiling with her teeth.

If they were enemies, Selena had no doubt that Camilla would have had no problem striking her down right then and there. There was something intoxicating about having her trust. Selena didn’t ever want to betray it.

“Then leave it to me,” she said. “I have this in the bag.”

Maybe other people might have accused her of bragging. Camilla only chuckled, and the sound made all of Selena’s senses heighten at once.

She started to brush Camilla’s hair. It was silky smooth already, but brushing gave Selena time to think.

“Have you ever done this for someone else before?” Camilla asked as Selena worked her way from the bottom to the top of her head with the brush.

“Not really,” Selena answered honestly.

Before the war, her mother had taken to braiding Selena’s hair before bed, but that wasn’t the same. Out of all the future children, the only person whose hair a person could really _do_ anything with besides Selena’s had been Lucina’s, and it wasn’t like they sat around painting their nails once a week. Lucina wasn't the type, and anyway, there had been a war going on. Selena was lucky if she got to do her _own_ nails.

She continued, “But my own hair is longer than yours, and I’ve been doing it for forever. Doing yours is a piece of cake in comparison.”

Camilla hummed. “But you always keep your hair in pigtails, don’t you? I don’t I’ve ever seen you try out a new style.”

“Pigtails look good on me,” Selena defended. She definitely wasn’t going to mention looking like her mother with her hair down. “I’m not going to mess with perfection!”

Camilla chuckled. 

Selena cleared her throat and continued, “But for you, Lady Camilla, I’ll go all out with something new.”

“Well, I’m certainly grateful to have such a caring retainer.”

Camilla was smiling at her. Selena knew it without looking. She kept her eyes downward in order to keep from being blinded from it.

Selena figured out what she wanted to do with Camilla’s hair before she finished brushing it, thankfully. It had been a while since Selena had even braided her own hair, and she fumbled with keeping so many long strands in check more than once. Camilla made a questioning sound the third time Selena started over, but Selena resolutely kept going. She found a rhythm soon enough.

“Oh,” Camilla said when Selena was halfway finished. “Very clever.”

“Just wait until it’s done,” Selena said determinedly. “It’s a look fit for a princess.”

It didn’t take long for Selena to complete her work. When the thick braid was finally finished, she snagged a few loose bobby pins from Camilla’s vanity and pinned the tail of it into place. She spent another minute tugging at different strands of Camilla’s hair to make the braid sit right on her head. Then she stepped back.

Camilla turned this way and that in her seat, trying to catch sight of herself in the mirror from several different angles. When she saw the finished hairstyle, her eyebrows had shot up and stayed up. That meant she was impressed.

“Well,” Camilla said, hands hovering but not quite touching the literal crown of hair fastened around her head, “you’ve certainly outdone yourself. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a hairstyle like this. Did you invent it?”

“I wish,” Selena said, pride filling her at Camilla’s words. It seemed too daring to wear anything that looked like a crown—even a crown made of hair—within the bounds of Windmire but—“I’ve seen it here and there when I traveled. I got a shopkeeper to teach it to me once.”

The memory of the method had been a bit rusty, but Selena was glad she remembered it now.

With anyone else, this might have been a “meh” moment. With Camilla, it was like Selena’s heart had never been taken from her.

Her ring pulsed with warmth for a second time as Camilla spun around in her vanity seat to face her. The force of it hit Selena like a mallet to the chest. Her lips parted with surprise as Camilla looked up at her, absolutely radiant.

“The throne isn’t exactly for me,” Camilla said, oblivious to Selena’s sudden realization. “But I do quite like this style. I might have to ask you to do this for me again sometime. Selena?”

Selena’s head snapped up. She tore her eyes away from the ring on her finger. “Yes?”

“Are you alright?”

Camilla frowned and stood up before Selena could answer. At her full height, she positively towered over Selena. Camilla was both taller and broader than Selena, who, while tall in her own way, could in no way compare to the oldest princess of Nohr. This close, the height difference between them would have been absolutely imposing to anyone else. To Selena too, when she saw Camilla on the battlefield.

But the hand Camilla reached out wasn’t meant to hurt. She felt Selena’s forehead with cool fingers and brushed a few tiny strands of hair away from Selena’s forehead.

“You’ve gone positively pale,” Camilla said, eyebrows furrowed. Her face was lined with worry.

Selena’s mouth had gone dry. “Lady Camilla, I…”

She looked down again, twisting her ring around her finger. She felt it slide against her skin with familiar smoothness.

After Selena had taken her ring back from that scoundrel Nelson, she had sworn she’d never lose it again. She knew it would haunt her forever if she ever did.

But this… This was different.

 _Camilla_ was different.

She looked up.

“Lady Camilla,” she said again, pulling the ring off her finger. Camilla’s eyes widened in surprise. “Would you do me a favor? Please?”

“So sudden,” Camilla said softly. Her eyes flickered from the ring in Selena’s hands to her face. But she didn’t look angry, so Selena kept going, ignoring the sudden heat of her cheeks.

“Would you mind holding on to this for me?” Selena asked. “And—I might ask for it back sometime. But this ring is really precious to me. It’s my treasure. So will you keep it safe for now?”

Evidently, that wasn’t what Camilla had been expecting to hear. Selena saw as much on Camilla’s face.

But Camilla got over her surprise before Selena found a better way to explain herself. She looked at Selena seriously.

“Alright,” Camilla said. “You are my darling retainer, after all. If this is important to you, then of course I’ll keep it safe.”

Camilla held out her hand, and Selena reluctantly dropped the ring into Camilla’s open palm.

Selena dropped her arm to her side. She could still feel the weight of her mother’s ring in her hand, just as she had all those years ago by that creek.

The moment Camilla’s fingers curled around the ring, however, that memory was replaced with a flood of sensation. Intense joy and despair washed over her in waves. The concave space in her chest suddenly filled with warmth.

In Selena’s ears, glass shattered. Light flashed behind her eyes, and she rapidly blinked the stars away. Her vision cleared, but Camilla was no longer looking at her. She had already turned back to the vanity table.

“Just say the word and I’ll give this back to you,” Camilla said.

A wooden jewelry box sat on the vanity. Camilla reached for it, and Selena’s heart was suddenly seized with the fear that Camilla would drop Selena’s ring among all her other trinkets like something common.

Back to Selena, Camilla paused. Her hand reached lower.

She didn’t lift the top of the jewelry box like Selena expected. She opened a little side drawer lined with velvet instead. It was empty. Camilla gently placed Selena’s ring inside.

Selena’s shoulder’s slumped with relief. Camilla shut the drawer and turned back.

Her head jerked back with visible surprise when she spotted Selena. “Selena? Why are you crying?”

The question surprised Selena. She reached up and touched her own cheeks. Sure enough, they were wet.

“I…”

Camilla crossed the distance between them and pulled Selena close, burying Selena’s face into her shoulder. Selena felt the softness of Camilla’s cheek press against the top of her head. She was completely engulfed in the kind heat that was Camilla.

“Are you alright, dear?” Camilla asked.

Selena sniffed wetly into Camilla’s should. She felt—

Selena _felt_.

She swallowed thickly, blinking several more tears out of her eyes. “Yeah, I… I think I will be.”

“There, there.” Camilla pet the back of her head not unlike how a mother would comfort her child. Only they weren’t mother and child; they were Camilla and Selena, and that was what Selena had been missing all along. “Let me help.”

So Selena did.

**Author's Note:**

> Camilla's hairstyle looks like [this.](https://youtu.be/eLudt1wGqRM?t=159)
> 
> When Brady's crying and Noire comforts him by saying "You have to be honest about how you feel, otherwise you’ll never move on," that's a direct reference to this quote in Steven Universe: ["You have to be honest about how bad it feels so you can move on."](https://youtu.be/QborITW_l6Q?t=620)
> 
> Camilla deadass thought Selena was about to propose at the end there. 
> 
> Camilla taking Selena's ring broke the magic because love conquers all. Loving Camilla already weakened it, but Selena literally gave Camilla her heart via her mom's ring. She opened herself back up to feeling even though it was risky. And she was rewarded by Tharja's hex finally breaking for it.
> 
> Feel free to leave a comment below or hit me up on my [tumblr!](http://someobscurereference.tumblr.com/) I get a lot of FE14 meta and fic related asks there, so feel free to browse through my "asks" or "fe14" tag for some extra stuff from me and your fellow readers that you may not see over here. Or send in a question of your own if you had one! Thanks for reading!


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